It’s easily one of the most iconic settings in all of D&D history and we’ve gone into detail about how we homebrewed sections of Curse of Strahd for our table. But, what do you do when the long-running adventure you’ve been running ends at around 10th level? How do you handle it when your players want to continue with this set of characters and take it all the way to epic tiers?
We’ve discussed a lot of the story beats and character arcs that we continued with following the defeat of Count Strahd von Zarovich throughout the episodes and articles, but as a companion piece to our first episode back, I wanted to give everyone a peek at what I threw at the party for the final, epic confrontation with Vampyr, the Star of Blood.
Kitbashing is one of my favorite tools to use as a DM, as it saves a ton of prep time that is better served focusing on the story and character arcs that are unique to your table. My design of the final encounter is no different.
I have given many shout-outs to Lunch Break Heroes Curse of Strahd YouTube series, as I feel he does a great job at expanding portions of the module. It was his idea to use Vampyr as a final confrontation with an excellent, cooperative “Ritual in Amber” to finally bind Vampyr (which you can find in his video link.) Unfortunately, he had planned it to be a final confrontation for characters of approximately 10th level. My players were going to be 17th level… so, in the manner of our CR 20 Strahd, I ramped the epic finale up to an encounter that easily exceeded CR 30. Well exceeded.
Game of Death
I love Bruce Lee. So, why wouldn’t I develop the final confrontation as an homage to Lee’s posthumous film Game of Death? For anyone not familiar (which would be insane!), the final scene is Lee’s famous fight up the levels of a pagoda (turned into a restaurant in the film), as he battles more deadly villains, until finally facing the ultimate villain: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar!
I played off the deals that the characters made in the Amber Temple earlier in the campaign. In my version, as the characters drew on the Dark Gifts that they received, it weakened the Amber prisons that the Dark Powers were held in. Vampyr had obtained a powerful ancient relic (the Eldritch Tendril) which was allowing it to siphon primordial power from the Elemental Planes and the North Pole (don’t ask!). With enough power, it would allow Vampyr to release the specific entities that the players had made pacts with: Vaund the Evasive, Seriach the Hellhound Whisperer, and Zantras the Kingmaker (all pictured above.)
As we discussed in the episode, I recruited our good friend, Scott Washburn of Paper Terrain, to build Mount Ghakis, Tsolenka Pass, and the Amber Temple. This allowed me to space out several high-powered villains without overloading the battlefield.
The Monster Wrangler
We discussed on the show how I recruited my brother, Matt, to be the “Monster Wrangler.” In the same manner as Lunch Break Heroes, I took inspiration and tweaked a great idea that Matt Colville had in his Running the Game series about the “Monster Wrangler.”
Colville’s method is to have one of the players move the monsters in combat and track who has attacks on whom. Since I was running a massive battlefield with several CR 20+ villains, I took this one step further by having my Monster Wrangler run several of the villains for me: Seriach the Hellhound Whisperer as well as the Balewing, an eldritch horror that the roc of Mt. Ghakis had been transformed into that I found in the Book of Beautiful Horrors by Regerem.
This freed me up to run Vaund the Evasive, Zantras the Kingmaker and the BBEG to end all BBEGs, Vampyr the Star of Blood – not to mention track all of the combat with five players playing six characters plus pets, homunculi, steeds, etc.
The Dark Powers
Vampyr is Strahd’s maker. Zantras, Seriach, and Vaund needed to be imprisoned by Mordenkainen and his friends. These are world-ending powers, so how do you stat them to make it accessible for your game?
I made the decision that Vampyr would be at nearly full power, having been released centuries before by Strahd drawing on his Dark Gift. I clocked him at approximately CR 30, which is about as high as you can go before bounded accuracy completely shits the bed. I based it off a Lovecraftian monster from the Book of Beautiful Horrors, known as a Prime Spawn.
For the other three Dark Powers, I made the decision that they would be underpowered, having just been released prior to the confrontation. So I benchmarked them to existing monsters within the sourcebooks. Seriach was a customized Balor, Vaund was an incredibly customized and beefed up Drow Shadowblade, and Zantras was a customized Graz’zt.‘
I grabbed all of the stats that I had worked on out of my Campaign Google doc and saved them as a Word doc for you all to peruse. As always, let me know your thoughts on their power level, if you think I’m insane for throwing all of this at the players in one session, or if you plan to use them in your games – I’d love to hear how it went. Share and share alike!
Final Thoughts
It takes a village. This is true for DMing as well. DM Tony made the reference to “DM Delegation” during the episode, and I think this is a great example of it. There are times when enlisting help is not only warranted, but could be essential.
I borrowed and kitbashed ideas and monster templates from multiple sources so that I didn’t have to create everything out of whole cloth – giving me time to build on the encounter, story, etc.
I enlisted the help of our friend, Scott Washburn, to craft the most amazing table piece and miniatures I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with.
I enlisted the help of a Monster Wrangler to assist with the heavy lift, but also bring about another level of deadliness that it can be hard to create when you’re running everything on the board.
And, finally, I trusted that my players were going to help me deliver an appropriate conclusion to an already amazing campaign. And they did just that.
“Go big or go home,” is a phrase thrown around, but for me, I think there are times in your campaign when going big will help you bring it all home. Don’t be afraid to lean on people and trust them enough to help you create something really fantastic and incredibly memorable.
“If you want to go quick, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Until next time, Heroes…. LIVE THE ADVENTURE!